Hi! I'm Corrila Daevion'lyr and I'll probably kill you

You already hate me. Don’t worry, everyone does.

Reasons to be an outcast 1 – half drow. The drow hate you for being a half drow and everyone else hates you for being a half drow. I’ll fill you in on the details below. It’s cute. Stick around.

Reasons to be an outcast 2 – psychic powers. Born with them. Everyone just loved that. The weird kid who could read everyone’s mind. Super popular. It’s hardly surprising. Show me a happy go lucky psychic creature and I’ll show you… I don’t know. There’s no appropriate metaphor.

Reasons to be an outcast 3 - I mean look at me. Don't hate me just for being gorgeous. But you can add it to the list. 

Let’s run through a few of the psychic types, shall we? Just listen to their names. Thought Eaters, Flesh Harrowers, Mind Flayers, Intellect Devourers… no Big Cuddle Givers or Happy Smile Bestowers. Just Psion Killers and Gray Gluttons.

There’s the Thri-Keen, I guess. Those loveable bloodthirsty praying mantis types. And then you have the Caller in Darkness. They could be calling with presents, right? Or just the local watch officers keeping an eye? But no. They appear as a roiling cloud of pale mist, with dozens of silently screaming humanoid faces. What’s not to like?

So when you’re born a member of the psychic club, those are the funsters waiting for you in the club house. Such a thrill.

It didn’t help that my parental units were – for want of a better phrase – ships in the night. I guess they shipped themselves though, because mummy dearest’s drow aristocrat parents absolutely didn’t. They did ship their granddaughter off to a kindly duergar nursery as fast as possible before the neighbours found out. Then that became home, if home is the right word for bleak rock walled semi-prison filled with the dour, pessimistic, untrusting duergar, who are always toiling and complaining, with no memory of what it means to be happy or proud and who set about raising me with the kind of love, care and emotional nourishment they’re renowned for.

Daddy dearest, I have no idea. I think maybe he was a Xeph. I did a bit of research because – so look, here’s why. Picture the scene. You’re at school. But imagine you’re at school where all the other kids are duergar and you’re tall, willowy and hot as fuck. You attract attention. None of it good. Men want to sleep with you against your wishes. Women want to kill you.

Now, you’re hitting puberty, which is super fun from the off, amirite? You accidentally find yourself alone because you have no friends, and no-one will spend any time with you which leaves you vulnerable to incidents like when a couple of good ol’ duergar boys ask if you’d care to show them what you look like sprawled on the ground screaming for help and a couple of good ol’ duergar girls ask if a slut like you tempting all the boys would like to show them what you look like with a screwdriver coming out of your eye.

And then, from out of nowhere, and also out of the palms of your hands, come these shimmering bolts of energy that lance into your assailant’s brains killing them on the spot and leaving no evidence whatsoever because they vanish.

It’s like, how can I describe it? OK, imagine you farted a dagger that was still a fart but was dagger shaped and it went up someone’s nose and killed them but when the feds came to check things out all they could say was ‘the one who denied it supplied it,’ and no jury is going to convict on that evidence.

But of course, this is school. No-one grassed because they’re fucking duergar so the whole dour, pessimistic, untrusting business weirdly worked out. But they all knew. Having said that, if anyone offers you the choice between having everyone hate you and having everyone hate you and be scared of you, go for option number two.

Suddenly it turns out I’m a super brain – which I guess I kind of am with the daggers and shit – and I pass the diploma with all top grades without taking a single test or submitting a single piece of work. I’m out, superbly qualified, at the age of 14 and close to being the least liked thing that’s ever lived. Even a mind flayer has other mind flayers every now and then.

Now my options in the Underdark are not good and my options out of the Underdark are not great and those are the only two places I’ve got available to me when this guy sort of materialises out of nowhere. Not a metaphor. Literally. I’m sitting outside the school, which had been home for 12 years, figuring out how long it would take to starve to death and how ahmayzing a corpse I’d leave – so slim – when there’s a wibble (I didn’t really finish school so the vocabulary isn’t perfect) and there’s a dude where there was no dude.

“Dude,” I say.

“Shusht wyrd child, fair beastie, by the power vested in my summoning I hold thee to my purpose with the Unspeakable Word,” he says.

So I’m like, “Are you lost?”

And he’s, like – “Avaunt ye!”

And I’m hazy on avaunt – the limited vocab, check what I said earlier, keep up – but it definitely isn’t polite, so I’m like, “Seriously, no offence Gandalf,” – the dude had a beard so wild it made his eyes look normal – “but I think you have me mistaken for someone who gives a fuck,” and I’m just about to go find somewhere to wish I could find some food, when I realise… wait a minute. Summoning. This could be my meal ticket. And I mean that literally.

So I get all eye rolling and woo-woo “hail traveller to the deeps, your power binds me, your spirit compels me, command me master, take me to the seat of you power,” and fuck me if he didn’t just do that.

Now I’m in a wizards tower, I bean the old coot with brain blade, figure I need a better word for them, help myself to some grub and some cash and head for the ground floor sharpish before the cleaner shows up sometime next century if the windows are anything to go by.

Anyway yada yada yada bit of killing, bit of stealing, nothing too dramatic, just a girl getting by, and before you know it I’m fairly highly placed in a School of Assassins in Chult. It’s not really my bag, I’ll be honest, but the hours are good, and you get healthcare from the serpent clerics in the village.

I’m the queen of the hotel hit because I can don the maid’s uniform and – hey presto – the soul knives (like it? Not my idea. The School had a good marketing team and one of their branding guys was a canny motherfucker) rend the targets mind and I’m polishing next door’s bathroom floor while the bodyguards are blowing their minds. Well, they think they are. I could show them what having their minds blown really means, but they weren’t included in the price.

So I was coming round the Gulf during the Jungle Wars last year, I was doing this thing, anyway. And I came up over this hill, and I saw the ocean... and it was on fire. The whole thing, on fire, and it was beautiful. I just sat there and watched it, and that's when I realised there might be a meaning to life, you know, like an organic power that connects all living things. I dunno.

And then I got on a ship to Kantas because best I could guess my dad ended up there and here I am.

I'm trying to figure it out.

I just don’t know what to do next.